Microsoft Grabs Rise of the Tomb Raider in Xbox Exclusive - Update

[LordMonty]

Ok so yea its timed, bit painful that Microsoft needed this to take on Uncharted 4(also out autumn 2015), which I hope destroys them for the insult to me as a buyer on the PC.

This all shores up that i'll get a PS4 for Xmas as never played Last of Us and a few friends wanted to play Destiny with me and hell i'll buy Uncharted just to keep Sony top dog as they seem very much the lesser dick at the moment.

I don't think boycotts threats or any silly high-jinks will hold up but I say just keep supporting Sony and prove this sort of marketing ploy fails and the games industry will be better for it(hurt Square along the way who are equal in the crime here). Not say if your an XBONE fan don't buy what you want, be happy enjoy but be aware this is not a good practice to be encouraged but those who can do something please say it with your wallet.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

microsux is doing everything they can to grab gamers away from the PS4 lol.. this won't last long as an exclusive.. you can count on that... no way square enix will pass on making lots more money off of PS4 gamers

 

[JayRPG]

Nintendo or Sony gets an exclusive: "Good job! That's another reason to buy your console!"

MS gets an exclusive: "What? How dare they! I'll show them by refusing to buy their console!"

You can always rely on the Escapist for an absurd level of anti-MS bias.

Given Squeenix's financials, it's quite possible that funding from MS was extremely helpful in getting them game out in the first place.

I take it you weren't here when people flipped their shit over Bayonetta 2 becoming a Wii U exclusive then?

If this were an Xbone exclusive to begin with (like say Sunset Overdrive) then people wouldn't have a problem, but since it was originally meant to be multi-platform until Microsoft threw money at them, people are rightfully pissed off.

There's a difference between Bayonetta 2 and this and it still pisses me off that people flip their shit about Bayonetta 2.

Bayonetta 2 would not have happened if Nintendo had not published it. Period. End of story. There would be no Bayonetta 2 at all because no publisher would take it except Nintendo. That's why its a friggin Wii U exclusive. It wouldn't have existed without Nintendo's support.

Tomb Raider would easily have gotten a sequel without the bags of cash that Microsoft gave Square for the exclusivity deal.

Glad to hear Tomb Raider's just a timed exclusive. But if it had stayed completely exclusive, it would have been the same to me as Bayonetta 2. As someone who's going to get a PS4 eventually, it makes no difference if Bayo2 is on the WiiU or never made at all, because I'll never get to play it. I have no desire to buy a system simply for one game, because that's pretty much the only one the WiiU has that I care about.
I hope Ninty gave Platinum Games a metric crapton of dough for it, because that's all the money they'll be making. Your average Bayonetta fan probably isn't the type of person to get a WiiU (just like they probably didn't get a Wii), so it's probably going to sell even less copies than the original did. While it's no where near as big as something like Halo or Mario, imagine if both of those series had jumped ship to PS4. Or if the next Uncharted went to Xbone.
Regardless of whether or not Bayonetta 2 would have been made or not without Nintendo's intervention, to the fans of the game it's the same as if it had never been made. And it's still insulting to the original fans, because if it hadn't be for all the PS3 and 360 gamers, there never would have been the interest (small though it was) for Nintendo to give Bayonetta so much as a second look. Because Platinum Games apparently doesn't care about their loyal fans, as far as I'm concerned they can fuck right off.

That might be the most inane nonsense I have ever read.

First of all, for someone who apparently loves Bayonetta 2 so much, you have absolutely no desire to play any of the other Wii U exclusives that are similar? Devil's third? Xenoblade Chronicles X? Hyrule warriors (to an extent)? Soul Saga? The new Legend of Zelda? Windwaker HD? The entire Wii back catalog (which is surprisingly full of non motion control, non kids only games)?

To write off an entire console this early in the generation sounds like you're just a mindless Nintendo hater, I don't like the Xbone, the only game I want to play on it is Sunset Overdrive, but I haven't written off buying one sometime in the future depending on new games/exclusives. Just like I didn't write off buying a Wii U when it was first released and now I have one and don't regret it in the slightest... it gets more use than my PS4 and X360 at the moment.

Your argument is basically "If I can't have it then nobody can!"... that's some elementary school shit right there.

Nintendo didn't give Platinum a "crapton of dough", Nintendo didn't approach Platinum and say "Hey, here's a truck load of cash, make bayonetta a nintendo exclusive".

As for "your average bayonetta fan blah blah blah"... I just listed a bunch of games that I, as a Bayonetta fan, are equally as excited for that are Wii U exclusives. You seem to have a complete misconception about what the Wii and Wii U are, are you one of those people who think all these consoles have is G rated baby games?

I literally cannot wrap my head around your last few lines, if Uncharted had gone Xbone exclusive or Mario went to Sony it would NOT BE ANYTHING LIKE Bayonetta 2 going to Nintendo, literally nothing alike.

How is ensuring a game will be made an insult to it's original fans? You do understand that Platinum games approached Sega (the original publisher) and they wanted nothing to do with a sequel, PG then approached both Sony and Microsoft in hopes they would publish it and both didn't want to touch it with a 50 foot pole, I have no doubts that PG would have also approached Square Enix and even Namco Bandai but in the end, when they were on their last legs, they approached Nintendo and Nintendo agreed to publish it.

The only ones insulting the loyal fans are Sega, Sony and Microsoft for REFUSING TO PUBLISH THE GAME.

If Nintendo refused to publish Bayonetta 2 there would be no Bayonetta 2, it is as simple as that, I literally cannot even begin to comprehend how you think Platinum games has somehow insulted you for literally getting their game made IN THE ONLY WAY IT COULD HAVE BEEN.

I will say it again, slowly for you: Sega, Sony and Microsoft REFUSED... TO... PUBLISH... BAYONETTA 2.

If your argument is that Platinum games should have never approached Nintendo, gave up and never made Bayonetta 2 instead of what is happening now then I find it very hard to believe you are a "loyal fan" and I cannot even begin to convey how childish it is to say "If I can't have it, then nobody should have it"

 

[JayRPG]

All this will create is the possibility of bad ports (and there will be ports, that much is certain) and crappy release sales. Xbone exclusive isn't that great of a thing right now.

Not really, it's not as big of an issue with everything being x86 nowadays. That made sense back when everything was proprietary.

They still somehow manage it but yes it is a lesser chance.

No. Now that the XBO and PS4 are basically just PCs thanks to the x86 architecture it isn't a "somehow manage" scenario. Porting has never been and will never been easier than it is right now.

Yet we've seen a string of bad 'next gen' ports. Like i said i grasp that we have unified architecture (it's even all AMD FFS). What i was saying was with all these new advantages and reduction in complexity it's embarrassing we still see bad ports.

What ports are you talking about?

As far as I know.. there hasn't been any new gen exclusives that have been ported to another console (or PC) yet.

If you are talking about games like Thief which were ported from the PS3/X360 then you are simply misunderstanding.

Last gen does not have unified architecture.. so porting to the new gen is still a tedious process that may not yield great results.

What Lightknight is trying to say is, that this Tomb Raider is being developed on the Xbone and since it has identical architecture to the PS4 and PC the port will be easier than it ever has been.

The porting advantages only apply to new gen games that were developed on the new platforms.

 

[JayRPG]

What ports are you talking about?

As far as I know.. there hasn't been any new gen exclusives that have been ported to another console (or PC) yet.

If you are talking about games like Thief which were ported from the PS3/X360 then you are simply misunderstanding.

Last gen does not have unified architecture.. so porting to the new gen is still a tedious process that may not yield great results.

What Lightknight is trying to say is, that this Tomb Raider is being developed on the Xbone and since it has identical architecture to the PS4 and PC the port will be easier than it ever has been.

The porting advantages only apply to new gen games that were developed on the new platforms.

Oh yeah. Must be having a brain-fart, i keep forgetting a lot of games are still "Coming to all platforms" which means they are generally just up-scaled Xbox 360/ PS3 games. I keep forgetting this generation has yet to come into full swing and everyone is still chained to devices from 8 years ago.I'm mainly thinking of the recent Ubisoft/ EA ports but i suppose those companies have open hostility for the PC platform anyway.

I look forward to seeing some competency pay off.

I still don' expect Ubi and EA PC ports to be that great, porting is easier but they still have to have some competence in changing the control scheme from a controller to a KB and mouse and I have no faith in EA/Ubi's ability to do that

 

[Shuu]

Artificial exclusivity is inexcusable as far as I'm concerned.
Games like Halo, or Uncharted being exclusives, fair enough. I don't like it, but fair enough, the companies that make those games are owned by M$ and Sony after all.
But stepping in and bribing a publisher to cut off support for one platform or another, that's... that's just mean! It's mean is what it is! Like... Microsoft, why are you being mean to me? What did I do to you? This isn't for the benefit of your own customers, they would have been able to play it regardless of whether or not it was also on PS4 or PC. You just walked in and took something away from us, because you're just mean.

 

[Metalrocks]

im more wondering how long this timed exclusive will last. not that M$ tells CD to hold for other platforms any longer because they still want to sell more crappy boxes.

 

[Dandres]

So Sony lets go of Square Enix just for Square Enix to turn around and make games for PS4's competitor. Interesting.

 

[Strazdas]

Microsoft meeting must have went something like this:

Quick, which one of our franchises sold best on PC? Tomb Rider? Ok lets bribe them to exclusivity and force everyone to use our potatobox!

"Rise of the awresfdslk;dsln"

Is that some lovecraftian monster? tell me more!

There must have been some kind of cocktail party where EA and Capcom were talking to Squeenix and telling him how awesome that timed-exclusive deal was. "Yeah, no, never mind that the other system is selling like hotcakes while the XBone collects dust. No no, it's fine. Like MS gives you so much money that it will make you forget any idea of profit you ever had!! Also, it's what your fans want or whatever."
And then they all burst into laughing and start to heartily pat each other on the back.

well, i guess it has to be nice to develop games where you can stop caring about whether the game sells or not since the publisher has already bribed you so much that your turning a profit either way.

Eh, not really. The Xbone and PS4 are basically PCs, changing the release platform is actually really simple (relatively speaking). There's really no way to do a "bad" port with them. Any technical issues the PC experience would happen on the consoles as well, barring issues with abnormal drivers and hardware.

True to a point. however APUs do perform a little bit differently, and Xbox At least are using a costum APU. if, and thats very unlikely, developer actually makes the game to specifically use the close porximity GDDR5 to CPU, then that would cause issue for PC due to PC GDDR5 being further from the CPU as it resides in the GPU. However I cant imagine any developer to bothering with this as it would give very little advantage for something you would need to code around and likely cost much more to develop. the only company i see trying this is Rockstar as they pretty much created a new streaming mode from disk and HDD together for GTA5 to go around the fact that consoles that had to run it were utter shit. people often udnerstimate this but that streaming is pretty big invention. Invetion that is completely useless on PCs since PCs simply are powerful enough to run it off HDD and dont need it, but still an invention.

 

[alj]

Whist this is a timed exclusive, i think this will still cause problems as if you are not developing with PC in mind. Sure the architecture is the same but developing for one fixed device can make you lazy, for example if you cannot work out a bug that makes the game crash at > 60 FPS you can just lock it to 30 on the console, but this is not acceptable on PC. Look at watchdogs and how the PC version was effected by it also being on console.

I am tempted not to buy this on general principle now, or at least wait until a steam £5 special, and i enjoyed the last one too, bit of a shame that the puzzle solving and platforming was put on the back burner but it was still fun.

 

[BrotherRool]

Timed exclusive is fine. This is going to hurt SE (unless Microsoft paid a boatload of cash) because they miss the holiday season on the bigger consoles, but it's okay, I can wait.

 

[Soulrender95]

So Sony lets go of Square Enix just for Square Enix to turn around and make games for PS4's competitor. Interesting.

when did Sony ever "have" Square Enix? SE isn't a first or second party developer, they've always been third party and free to make games for whoever they wanted to make them for.

OT:
so much PR speech and double talk, it's hard to tell if Rise of the Tomb Raider is actually exclusive or timed, either way sucks and I can't help but feel this is going to hurt the brand and destroy what goodwill the previous game garned which seems a shame after the seemingly uphill struggle to get people to care about the brand again after the previous games reboot.

Financially I can see why it makes sense to SE, but I just don't know if the brand is strong enough to survive the PR backlash any more.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

They don't want my money? That's ok, there's enough other stuff to play. SquareEnix shot themselfs with this move. If i'll ever play this game it's a rental or second hand. Lucky for me i don't look forward to play it as soon as it's out otherwise i would be pissed. Sucks for the former supporters who don't own a xbone.

 

[Olas]

Timed exclusivity seems really stupid. Like I'm going to go out and buy an Xbone just so that I can play a game SOONER.

But whatever, if Microsoft wants to waste their money that's their prerogative. I never buy games near launch anyway.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Since it's a timed exclusive I dare to say that the PC and PS4 version will gett additional content when the contract with MS ends.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Literally no news related to Microsoft's next-gen policies have been good, as far as the ones I've heard.

 

[smithy_2045]

Nintendo or Sony gets an exclusive: "Good job! That's another reason to buy your console!"

MS gets an exclusive: "What? How dare they! I'll show them by refusing to buy their console!"

You can always rely on the Escapist for an absurd level of anti-MS bias.

Given Squeenix's financials, it's quite possible that funding from MS was extremely helpful in getting them game out in the first place.

Totally agree. When I complained about Destiny having timed exclusive items and maps for Playstation everyone was like, "oh you'll get it eventually, it's no big deal" even though I'll be paying the same as they are. Well, what goes around comes around. I'm not a huge Tomb Raider fan, but I think I'll definitely get this, do my part to encourage more Xbox One exclusives.

My favourite is when Microsoft do it, it's all about the money, but if Sony does the exact same thing, it's somehow about providing a better experience for the gamers.